Editor's Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on the life of John Henry Newman. Read Part One here.

John Henry Newman, by Dr. Pat McNamara

As a newly minted Roman Catholic, John Henry Newman had no immediate prospects before him. Catholicism was unfamiliar terrain. Attending his first Masses, he didn't completely understand them, but a belief in Christ's Eucharistic presence sustained him:

[A]fter tasting of the awful delight of worshipping God in His Temple, how unspeakable cold is the idea a Temple without that Divine Presence! One is tempted to say "What is the meaning, what is the use of it?" It was that 'Great Presence' which made a Catholic church different from every other church in the world.

He wanted to continue in ministry, within a religious community. In the Oratorians he found a happy balance between community life and individual initiative, between scholarship and pastoral work. Founded in 16th-century Italy by St. Philip Neri, members lived in communities known as Oratories, literally "houses of prayer."

As a priest, Newman opted to work with the poor, "in the midst of the mechanics." He chose Birmingham, a large industrial town, to start an Oratory. He stayed there for the rest of his life, lecturing, writing, and doing parish work. Although Newman wrote prodigiously, he didn't live in an ivory tower.

His Idea of a University (1851), a series of lectures on higher education, is still a standard in the field. The Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), written just before his conversion, shows the Church as a living, growing body, rather than a static institution. His published lectures and sermons are still in print. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870) laid out a framework for religious belief.

His early years as a Catholic weren't easy. While former colleagues called him a traitor, many Catholics considered him a closet Protestant. During the 1850s, an ex-priest whose misdeeds he had chronicled sued him for libel in a highly publicized case, and won. Newman was named to head an Irish Catholic university that never got off the ground. As editor of The Rambler, an independent Catholic journal, he advocated the role of the laity, which got him in trouble with conservative bishops.